December 9, 2012

IN a marketing move that seems to have fallen flat, the Invicta Watch Company created a rig with cameras to be slung under a weather ballon and launched it. The result: they could have achieved the same result at the local, Hollywood Florida Olan Mills.

I’m not sure exactly what the expectation was other than attempting, all be it way too belatedly, to ride the coat tails of the Felix Baumgartner record breaking jump that occurred back in October.

Details are lacking on the Invicta news page which is interesting because one would think Invicta would be milking this for all that it’s worth, I mean as much as sending watches up on a weather ballon can be milked. Of the 36 timepieces sent up, only pictures of three have been released by Eyal Lalo. Might the others be suffering from failing movements? Might hands be falling off on the edge of space as they appear to do here on Earth? Surely if the images and the high speed video that is promised do not show up, the conspiracy theories will follow.

One suspects that these timepieces will probably be sold at a premium with an official certificate of authenticity that they have been on the edge of space, along with t-shirts and other products.

October 12, 2012

WHILE attempting to figure out who will be producing Jim Skelton’s yet to be launched watch brand, I can across some brand new Invicta trademarks.

As if the Sea Hunter, Sea Spider, Sea Thunder, Sea Excursion and Sea Wizard wasn’t enough ocean inspired insipidness, welcome yet another dive inspired fashion watch family: the Sea Bird. As this is only a name in that same, tired serif font, there are no designs to yet share.

Might I suggest the Sea Men as the next in this fine lineage?

I wonder if Eyal actually pays for someone to come up with this shit or if it gives his wife something to do? I mean whose bright idea is “JT FOR INVICTA, TOWER OF STRENGTH” – what does that even represent? They apparently plan to make key chains, jewelry, watch boxes and cases with this branding.

WE also can see that Invicta appears to be diversifying with an interesting application for the trademark PowerPatch which covers a range of potential products that including battery packs for handheld electronics,I’d assume smart phones, stands and cases. This move sort of makes sense as they’ll now be able to sell all of their most rabid fans phone cases that match their favorite watches. Okay, that sounded a lot better when it was just a thought rolling around in my head. Reading it out loud and it sounds pretty goddamned dumb – but hey Invictard reality is not like mine so what do I know.

BUT what I find really intriguing is the trademarking of two different sets of map coordinates. So I pasted them into Google Maps.

The first, 47.1070N, 6.8246E, resolves to an apparent paper street and set of stairs near a Swiss address, Rue de Beauregard 7, 2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland.

I have been unable to determine what is at the address in question but I wonder if this might be an office of the company.

THE second trademark is 26.0280N, 80.1698W. This resolves to Invicta World Headquarters in Hollywood Florida:

February 2, 2012

DANIEL Mink has be lying lower than the Chi as it goes on 9 months with the undelivered Tourbillon that turned into an advanced order. Mink has stalled on a big announcement and has outright ignored complaints and threats from disgruntled customer on their ignored Facebook page.

Michael Davis, Invicta Watch Company’s Technical Brand Manager, just this morning posted on his Facebook that a big announcement will be made tonight on Larry Megan’s web show. Now “Big Announcements” from Invicta are a dime a dozen, but interestingly enough, Koi from the watchlords forum has a source who has told him that Renato has been sold and that Invicta bought up the Tourbillons that Mink couldn’t afford.

UPDATE 11:20 PM: So the big announcement is actually that Michael Davis is getting his own webs how? Jesus, these Home Shopping TV guys are like the rap moguls that run their labels out of the parents basement. Move over Skelton – Davis After Dark is here to challenge you on LiveStream. Watch the throne!

I still wonder if an Invicta takeover of Renato is eminent. I hope so – I wanna buy Renatos at JC Penny and Costco.

May that big announcement be that Renato has ‘joined’ the Invicta Watch Group?

January 24, 2012

THERE is no possible way I could not share this immediately. I mean, I thought about saving it for later in the week but if it’s real, and with Invicta you just never know, then it’s just too goddamn funny to sit on.

I received a mail from someone claiming to be an “insider” of a sourcing firm that works with Invicta on their various apparel items.

The belt fuckel below is supposedly a piece for a yet unnamed collection that will also including chain wallets. And chain belts.

For men.

It measures a whopping 17 centimeters across. No details on the weight, other than “hefty”. I attempted to get more answers and pics of more funny ass designs. My request has gone unanswered.

ACCORDING to the source, this thing will possibly see the light of day in the third or fourth quarter of this year.

June 29, 2011

SOME people have turned over stones regarding Invicta Watch Company claims; Koi of watchlords has rolled over a boulder.

It turns out Invicta’s Technical Brand Manager, one of three faces of the brand on ShopNBC, is also a graduate of con college! Mr. Davis was convicted of aggravated robbery in Montgomery County, Ohio in June of 1984.

Aggravated robbery is defined as “the taking of anything of value belonging to another from the person of another or that is in the immediate control of another when the offender intentionally inflicts serious bodily injury.”

I know what you’re thinking; “What’s serious bodily injury?”

It is defined as “bodily injury which involves unconsciousness, extreme physical pain or protracted and obvious disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of a bodily member, organ, or mental faculty, or a substantial risk of death.”

He was sentenced from 5 to 25 years. Who knew Davis was living a thug life( like Tupac thug life?! While he may have been a badd ass on the streets, Mr. Davis appears to have been a model prisoner as he served only 53 months and change, completing parole in 1990.

I’M of the opinion that the man served his time and this was nearly a quarter century ago, and in recent years is only guilty of being a jagoff; Michael “fuckin” Davis deserves a second chance.

But its still funny to find stuff like this in light of Mr. Davis preaching about “hater” sites and people making things up – especially from a convicted felon.

June 11, 2011

DAYS after Watchgeeks went white, Michael Davis finally addresses the issue: via Facebook. In short, he claims WG was hacked and a lot of damage had been done; that the site could be out of commission for a few weeks. But this seems so much balderdash. All hacker attacks these days are about information – passwords, personal information and financial information. Watchgeeks has none of this. And why would someone trash their servers – what’s the point? Server trashing and data destruction are carried out by governments against one another to slow weapons development. I don’t think anyone wants to slow the asshole development that goes on at Geeks – what would we laugh at?

NO, I think that this outage was the end result of Michael Davis’ reckless sticky trying to dissuade people from buying their pre-order Tourbillons from Renato. As is now the case with any Invicta misstep or lie, the party affected was quickly notified and claimed on Facebook to have taken some action. I asked Eyal Lalo via Twitter for a comment regarding this latest outage as well as the Renato situation and he has not responded to either of the inquiries.

Those that follow WGs probably remember similar unannounced outages after the DD Debacle, the Swinese revelation and the Manmade Natural Sandstone dials made their way to other forums and this blog and people broke apart and discussed the stories to reveal a very unflattering and dark picture of the Invicta Watch Company. Following the actual membership numbers revealed a decline following these outages. That seems to indicate that the former owners we’re trying to purge those lurkers who were gathering the evidence and presenting it to the public; as well as archiving it because WGs is notorious for deleting such items.

BUT now with Invicta actually owing the forum and such a long outage, one has to wonder if this is not just a purge of non posters but also a time out. A way to push out those active posters who are critical within the TOS of the site. They can then migrate to Watchlords, Watchfreeks, WUS and make Watchgeeks a place for those easily intimidated by the MODs and Yellow Shirt members.

Let’s check out those numbers when it comes back online; If that’s still possible when it does.

March 31, 2011

MIGHT the exit of Jim Skelton from ShopNBC be due to eroding watch sales?

Just days after ShopNBC released Q4 results for 2010, Mr. Skelton disappeared from the airwaves and neither side is saying anything of substance. You’ll remember that I speculated he would be gone a year ago following a series of bizarre, on-air actions and statements in October of 2009 after the announcement that Tim Temple was being brought back to the network who had fired him six years prior. What followed were twelve months that saw one Invicta flop and scandal after another. But dead watches and hands that fell off were not limited to Invicta as other brands sold by the network arrived in non-working order to customers. Mr. Skelton continued his hostile behavior, famously throwing a ruler on the set and teasing Larry Magen about his dye job to the point that Mr. Magen snapped on the air. Mr. Skelton was also absent for long stretches of time, leading many to believe that the end of the Skelton era had arrived. Upon his return he began calling out this blog as well as individual members of the Watchlords forum as well as adopting a very snide tone with his forum membership.

As people complained on watchgeeks about inferior products and misleading statements used to sell the watches they were systematically banned or bullied by the Yellow shirt enforcers into silence on the Watchgeek forum. But these heavy handed actions didn’t stop the descent; seemingly generating more. As the one year anniversary of my original blog approached, Mr. Skelton started bragging about signing a long term, no cut contract.

EVEN I was surprised when I saw the news. I assumed I had seemingly made the correct case but was off by a year. I did forget about the earnings call and so I took a look at the earnings information released by VVTV. At first I was equally shocked about the 6% decline in watch sales against the same time period last year at the psychological height of the depression. But is it really that shocking? The former individual owners of Watchgeeks, as well as others who I’d consider friends of this blog, usually downplay my suggestion that Shop watch sales were driven primarily by Watchgeek membership and it has always been thought, albeit anecdotally, that all of the testimonial calls into Mr. Skelton’s shows were plants. But in a thread on WG concerning Mr. Skelton’s split with Shop, we seem to have proof:

A friendship developed on email, and we would exchange idea’s and questions on the timepiece’s. One day Jim emailed me and asked to call into the show, as a customer, who, wanted to express feelings about timepiece’s and invicta models and my experience’s with them.

I called in several times, regarding many timepiece’s and vendor models as well.

I don’t think it is a stretch to believe that Mr. Skelton had bonuses tied to sales and he was not your ordinary shopping channel host. He was a cheerleader and apologist for Invicta long before he ever came to TV, possibly with a retail background. By some accounts a hand picked successor to Tim Temple by Eyal Cool J. Temple who, supposedly wanted more control over product and to push the higher-end. But realistically the margins are much smaller with those classes of timepieces. It makes a lot more sense to sell a Chinese assembled watch marked “Swiss” at several times it’s actual unit cost. Reaching out to just a few dozen individuals like the person quoted above would not only generate sales because of an implied “friendship” but would push other members into making multiple purchases as well; specifically shut ins and individuals with little or no self esteem and a need to belong.

BUT the decline in sales doesn’t fall completely on Mr. Skelton. ShopNBC advertised diamonds on watches that were actually crystal; they marketed Chinese made watches as having a Swiss pedigree; they used a man-made composite of sandstone and marketed it as natural; they sold turquoise dial watches that were a cheap mineral alternative and they sold watches that featured hands that fell of. People started criticizing the fact that every hyped model was just a different color dial or rubber instead of a steel bracelet like the previous version. Again, the complaints grew louder and those voices disappeared. Michael Davis, at the time a Watchgeek owner and still the Technical Brand Manager for Invicta, issued the now famous edict – there is no free speech at Watchgeeks.

There isn’t a doubt in my mind that people tired of getting products that were advertised as something they were not and that they tired of the heavy handedness of the forum. I’d expect a decline in sales to follow. Need more proof? Just take a look at how outrageous his sales presentations became.

IT was my belief in the fall of 2009 that Mr. Skelton would soon be benched. It didn’t come to pass on the original timeline. But now it has, and if we work backwards with a little math based on Mr. Skelton’s own comment on that original blog, he signed in late September or early October of 2009. I’d expect that to run one year, which would have placed his resigning again in that same September / October timeframe. It is now the end of March which would make a late September signing the 6 month mark. I do believe he is going to end up on WoW.tv or an Invicta launched channel. And I think a lot of people will follow him there and he’ll be just fine. Free of the employer oversight that seemingly burned him so many times over the past few years.

Will it be 6 months from now? Is that the real Watch Commander on Twitter claiming to be in Minnesota or an impostor?